“I’ll tell yore mammy to bring ye down somethin’ to eat,” added Granny Williams. And so she clucked to her mule. The solitary occupant of the cave stood now in the road, looking after them wonderingly, even the beloved cookie arrested halfway between hand and mouth. “Granny, what will become of a child like that left here in these hills?” demanded Marcia Haddon after a while. There was a half sob in her voice, though still that strange, new, warm feeling in her heart. “Why, she’ll go to hell, that’s what’ll become of her,” said Granny promptly. “Excusin’ of that school of Davy’s up thar on the hill, an’ what it kin do fer these childern, why, they’re all goin’ plumb to hell, accordin’ to ary sort of preachin’ I ever did hear.” “Yes,” she went on reflectively, “thar’s a heap of the onredeemed in these mountings, I reckon. Maybe the railroad’ll make all the valleys alike—I hope so. It may not come in my time. Davy says it’s a-comin’ right soon. I don’t know about them things.” Marcia Haddon made no answer. She looked across the tree-clad slopes of these rounded hills, trying to visualize the point of view of that man, her husband, who once had felt his own right to so much of this country and its contents. Ownership of these hills, this great world that lay about her undiscovered! Did, then, the rights of sovereignty impose no duties in return? “Granny,” said she suddenly, after they had traveled for a time in silence. “What is it, child?” asked the old dame gently. “Do you suppose the mother of that child would let her go away to school?” “Do I suppose so?” ejaculated Granny Williams fiercely. “Don’t I know she would? We been waitin’, here in the Cumberlands. Jest waitin’. Lord ha’ massy on us. “Look what Davy done,” she went on. “He war only out a couple of year, an’ yit he changed complete, ye mought say. I kain’t hardly understand him talk no more, he talks so furrin, same’s ye. If Davy has went furrin, ‘pears like we all mought as well chirk up some an’ git more furrin, too. The new railroad’ll sartinly change a heap of things. “Well, here we air at the gate of my cousin, right on beyant. We’ll light down an’ stop here overnight,” concluded Granny Williams at last, knocking the ashes out of her pipe and thrusting it into her pocket. “Was ye ever to school much in yore life, Ma’am?” she demanded as she stood, her lean arm across her mule’s neck. “Yes, Granny,” replied the “furrin woman” gently. “But I’ve learned more to-day, I think, than in all my life before.” CHAPTER XXIV THE DRUMS WHEN, on the afternoon of a later day, Marcia Haddon and her ancient chaperone re-entered the long and straggling street at the forks of the river, they noted certain signs of excitement. A group of men was standing; others were hurrying to the open space in front of the big store. A striking sound came to their ears—a sound not known in the Cumberlands for a generation—the throbbing of a drum, the shrilling of a fife.